Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his timescale is for delivery of a new hospital in West Hertfordshire.

A new hospital for West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust forms part of the Government’s commitment to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030. The programme to deliver the new hospitals involves schemes being grouped into ‘cohorts’. This is based on an assessment of existing readiness to progress and the extent to which new hospitals can benefit from advantages of delivery through a national programme.

The new hospital for West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is in the third cohort of ‘Pathfinder’ schemes. The Pathfinder cohort is the first group of larger and more complex schemes within the programme being progressed. The timing of the larger and more complex cohorts is still to be finalised, with delivery by 2030.